


first, save yourself

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: Character Study - Fandom, Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Dr. Who
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF! Rory, Gen, Genderbending, If Rory Williams was a girl, Rory William - free form, The Eleventh Hour, female!Rory Williams, not all heroes have to be bold, not all little girls have to wait
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 08:34:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4012894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Say, what if there was a diffrerent heroine? What if the 11th Doctor’s companion wasnt a bold redhead who waited for a raggedy man? Not all heroines are bold redheads. Not all heroine’s have to wait. Sometimes there’s no crack on the wall.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>  <em> Sometimes there is only this: a mousy haired girl greets a stranger in a blue box with her father's gardening shovel and stuttered demands. One day she might save the universe (she might not). </em></p><p>  <em>This is not her story, but it could be.<em></em></em><br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	first, save yourself

**Author's Note:**

> Greetings everyone! This is my fist fic in AO3 , a small study of character about the idea of Rory Williams as a girl, about her as a companion, as a character beyound his- now her- relationship with Amy. This is set in a universe where Amy's parent aren't dead, she lives in Scotland and the Doctor crashes in the William's backyard.
> 
> I own nothing, except my imagination. A whole universe , that is.

Say, what if there was a diffrerent heroine?

What if the Eleventh Doctor’s companion wasn't a bold redhead who waited for a raggedy man? Not all heriones are bold redheads. Not all heroines have to wait. Sometimes there’s no crack on the wall.

Her parents name her Rory after a grandfather, not the morning aurora or Queen Victoria. There is nothing flashy about her, nothing too much or too little, only the consistency of well-steeped tea and crushed hydrangeas, mild sensible things. Grounded things, things that grow, thorn-less creatures. 

Sometimes there is only this: a mousy haired girl with shaking hands sneaks away to her fathers tool shed. Because it’s warm and mysterius and a good place to read but mostly because she’s spent all afternoon hearing her parents throwing painful words at each other like darts like bullets, and she’s sick of it. She’s sick of it. She’s sick of a lot of things.

This is her story, or it could be. Somewhere in there this child meets a scatter brained, fidgeting man who calls himself a doctor like that’s a name and he’s not the one who heals her. She does that herself.

Rory Williams is quiet and patient and watchful and it’s not because of the Doctor. Rory Williams grows up to be a nurse and it’s not because of the Doctor.

Some nights she cries herself to sleep (silently, always silently) and it's not because of the Doctor. She watches every Star Trek episodes and puts together plastic starships, reads quantum physics articles on her spare time and it’s not because of the Doctor. One day she might save the world (she might not) and it won't be because of the Doctor, but no doubt he’ll be involved somehow.

Rory Williams is not Amy Pond, though they are unseperable during the summer hols, when Amy, all bright smiles and apple shampoo comes to Leadworth and they play Indiana Jones and Luke vs. Darth Vader. It will take years for Rory to realize why apple is her favorite smell. Some things stay the same in every universe.

Rory Williams is not Amelia Pond.

Remember this. When the Doctor offers to show her all the wonders of time and space, Rory Williams doesn’t ask the when, but how. She berates him for parking all over her father's beloved yellow hydrangeas while quivering with fear, with awe. She makes mental lists of the impossibilities and hypotesis and asks clumsy questions without getting any understandable answers. She asks anyway. She asks to bring her Dad along. There are so many stars out there. She wants to shere those with her Dad, the only one who sees her as a wonder.

When the Doctor crashes on the Williams' backyard, Rory Williams greets him with her father’s gardening spade and stuttering demands. When the Doctor makes to come inside the house, she puts herself in his path and tells him to wait while she fixes him something.

She’s a kind girl, this spade-wielding child, but not an open one. The Doctor notices that. He also notices the welts where her nails had reddened baby fat palms, but he doesn't mention it. He tinkers with the TARDIS and shakes with post-regeneration jitters and eats all the biscuits she offers him with oversteeped tea.

He regrets it when he complains about the food, but only after she tells him she made them herself for her mom. Rusty with younglings though he might be, the Doctor remembered well when his children got together to surprise their parents with easy to make gallifreyan recipes. He recalls how proud they were of the wonderful mess they made and how much he loved those cakes, no matter how rocky or grainy. There are too many of Rory’s biscuits left for them to have been apreciated the same way. The Doctor nudges her shoulder and tells tales of his greatest culinary disasters until she’s giggling in disbelief and there are only crumbs left.

They’re both awkward in different ways, lonely in others, but between the Doctor’s enthusiastic nonesence and Rory’s clueless good sense they manage to communicate somewhat. They both know understanding doesn’t really need to be spoken aloud.

(Turns out, the calming proprieties of cammimile tea work on Time Lords as well as humans. Little Amelia Pond would have forgotten the correct tea for each occasion but that’s not the point, not really).

The point is that, after a bewildering aqwaintence under the Leadworth stars, after promising to come back in the morning, when the sun is up and impossible things either make sense or don't exist, after hours spent dreaming with the endless cosmos and imagining her own adventures, after a morning and then an evening and then another morning, the Doctor doesn't show up.

The Doctor doesn’t show up, and Rory is sad, of course, betrayed and disappointed and not completly surprised, but she’s sensible enough to tell everyone else she’d just been playing witha make believe friend, and stubborn enought to know what she saw, even if she had no way to prove it even to herself. Rory Willliams is not a child used to being heard, to being loud.

Anyway, soon enough her parents arguing turns into another shouting match and Rory is left shaking, hiding in the shed, clutching a X-Men comic like it can take her to another world and really, it was a good thing the Doctor had broken his promise, because her Mom packs up all her clothes and Dusty Sprinfield records the next week and at least this time Rory had some practice in abandonment. At least this time, when Mom kisses her cheek with a perfunctory “see you soon dear” she known not to wait up.

This isn’t how the story goes, but it could be. A mousy haired girl under a gardening shed, watching a stranger fading inside a sci-fi box, watching her mother close a cab’s doors with perfectly manicured hands. Her baby fat hands are shaking. She doesn’t ball her fists. She doesn’t wait up. One day, this child might save the universe (she might not).

Until then there’s only this: a littly girl too sensible for her age makse her Dad camomile tea and they cry together over rocky biscuits. Tomorrow she’ll stutter and trip her way through middleschool, then blush and trip all through highschool. Eleven years from now she’ll be a certified nurse. Fifteen years from now and a galaxy away she might save the universe

But first, she’ll save herself.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. If you can, please leave comments, I'd love to know your opinions! Kudos are always welcome, of course.


End file.
